Modern communications networks utilize modulation coding scheme (MCS) adaptation to match signal transmission parameters to conditions of a radio link. Specifically, MCS adaptation is used to predict the coding rate for users during uplink/downlink scheduling, and is particularly useful when pairing users during multi-user multiple input multiple output (MU-MIMO) downlink scheduling. One drawback is that MCS adaptation becomes increasingly complex as users are added to the network. For instance, conventional MCS adaptation for MU-MIMO downlink scheduling can approach an order of cubic the number of transmit antenna (e.g., O(N3) for a system having N transmit antennas). Accordingly, techniques and mechanisms for reducing the complexity of MCS adaptation are desired in order to better preserve network resources, e.g., processing or otherwise.